SCCyberworld

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Investment in Rixty Expands MOL’s Presence into North and South America

23 October 2012, Kuala Lumpur – MOL AccessPortal Sdn. Bhd. (MOL), Asia’s leading e-payment service provider and a subsidiary of MOL Global Pte. Ltd., announced that it has made a majority investment in Silicon Valley-based alternative payment platform provider Rixty, Inc. (Rixty), becoming the first Asian e-payment service provider to acquire a North American e-payments platform.

Founded in 2007, Rixty allows users to spend cash and coins for online games, virtual goods and digital content via kiosks and prepaid cards at retail stores. The alternative payment platform allows consumers without credit cards or bank accounts to create spending accounts for online entertainment simply by taking their cash and coins to more than 75,000 locations across the United States and 66,000 locations in Brazil.

The investment in Rixty will provide MOL a strong foothold in North and South America, while supporting its continued global expansion. Rixty presently has offices in the United States and Brazil, with plans to expand into Canada and Mexico by the first quarter of next year. Including Rixty, MOL now operates in ten countries and plans to further expand into another two countries by the end of the year.

With global internet bandwidth improving, an increasing number of games are serving a global audience from a centralised North American base of operations. This strategic partnership will allow MOL to service global game publishers and provide a one-stop solution for them to monetise their global user base.

MOL and Rixty agree on the importance of the Brazilian market to online game publishers and are committed to further grow their presence in Latin America enabling global game publishers to monetise this important market. Brazil’s online games market is currently worth US$265 million and is estimated to almost double in size over the next few years.

MOL Global’s Group Chief Executive Officer, Ganesh Kumar Bangah, said the investment allows MOL to expand into these two huge markets while enabling MOL to tap into the best talent in Silicon Valley. “This investment takes us one step ahead to be global leaders in the US$19.2 billion worldwide virtual goods market. We look forward to working together with Ted and the Rixty team to capitalise on this tremendous opportunity,” Ganesh said.

“As a leading e-payment provider in Asia, MOL is the perfect partner to complement Rixty’s payment infrastructure across North and South America,” said Ted Sorom, CEO of Rixty, Inc. “Global publishers require a global solution. Together we give publishers the comprehensive worldwide payment platform they require,” Ted concluded.

Ganesh and Ted were speaking at the signing ceremony of the agreement between the two companies on the majority investment by MOL in Rixty. At the signing ceremony, MOL AccessPortal was represented by MOL’s Group Chief Executive Officer, Ganesh Kumar Bangah, while Rixty was represented by Ted Sorom, its Chief Executive Officer.

With this investment, the existing Rixty executive team and staff will continue extending the Rixty payment system into the Americas from their headquarters in San Francisco, California and their South American office in São Paulo, Brazil.